


Isolation

by Crownonymous



Series: Whumptober 2019 [7]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, Loneliness, Tears, Whump, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 22:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crownonymous/pseuds/Crownonymous
Summary: Her heart was empty.A year would never be enough.





	1. Haru

**Author's Note:**

> Day 7 of Whumptober 2019. First posted onto my tumblr, crossposting onto AO3

Isolation was the monster lurking under her bed, the beast that trailed after her with a drooling open maw, her own Damocles’ Sword, held aloft by a single hair. And in a way, the fact that she felt isolated from everyone else was a little funny.

What a silly girl you are, Haru Okumura. How silly for you to fret over such trivial matters like companionship when you had the whole world laid out before you on a silver plate. Isolation? Loneliness? Solitude? If you’re sad we can buy you new friends. Friends who will adore you and shower you with praise. Powerful friends from rich families that will further the heights of the Okumura name.

You’re so lucky to have all this money, all this fame, all this fortune, and yet you wallow in useless self-pity. Be thankful that you’re an Okumura.

Haru had friends. Fake friends with fake smiles, with honeyed words dripping with the money Father paid them to be nice to Haru. Rich sons and daughters of other conglomerate businesses that Father used as a tool to spread the Okumura family name. They agreed to everything Haru said, laughed at all her jokes, and invited her out to everything. Employees vying for her father’s favour complimented her dress, her hair, taught her how to play cat’s cradle when she was but a young child. Managers of the Big Bang Burger empire always took care in flattering her. Haru caught people around corners, laughing at the easy money just for humouring the Okumura heiress' petty desires to have someplace to belong.

Isolation, Haru thought, was the invisible cage in which she was doomed to die in.

She was always surrounded by people, but she was always alone.

And it was cold.

It was empty.

It was hollow.

All the wealth in the world couldn’t stave off the chasm inside Haru’s heart, the desire to have someone in her life, just one person, who saw her not as the rich Okumura daughter, but simply as Haru.

She waited.

She hoped.

The shoujo manga she happened to read in Shujin’s library had always said that someone would inevitably swoop in and save her from being on her own. Someone would show her that she was more than a damsel in distress, fated to walk a predetermined path. That she could live her own life without someone else’s hand moving the pieces on the board.

But no one came.

Father had arranged for her to marry the son of a wealthy politician. She, too, had become a tool to further his own ambitions.

No one came.

“I’ll be fine.” Haru nodded decisively. “Everything’s going to be okay Haru.” She gently stroked the tomato’s leaves. It had grown so much, rising up despite being in a cramped planter. “Don’t worry about me, okay?” The tomato did not speak. Haru continued to gently brush her fingers over the leaves.

She was in her last year of highschool now. The shoujo manga she had read when she first came into Shujin was long forgotten. A distant memory. She couldn’t even recall what it was about anymore.

The tomato plant was still green, not yet ready for harvesting. Haru hoped she had enough time over the coming weeks to care for it properly. “Shibuya’s a lot safer now that that mafia boss turned himself in. The Phantom Thieves are amazing, aren’t they?”

Silence.

“I wish they would answer my request too…”

Her phone pinged.

A text.

Haru’s smile thinned. “I have to go now. I’m sorry for leaving you in such a quiet place.” The rooftop was silent and the plants which Haru had cared for had to wait. “I wish I could stay here longer.” The text was from Sugimura. Haru didn’t want to go. She had no choice.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can, okay?”

She stood up, wiping the dirt from her hands onto her gym tracksuit. Her plants did not answer, but they were all that Haru had. The rooftop was the only place she felt less alone. Her plants; the tomatoes and carrots, the bougainvilleas and lilies, were the only reason she held on. The only things in her life that brought colour to her grey existence. If she was fated to walk a path someone else had chosen for her, she wanted to at least see flowers blooming at the edges.

Her heart was empty.

Haru walked by a pair of giggling girls on her way out from Shujin.

Haru walked alongside a crowd on her way back home.

She was surrounded by people.

She had never felt more alone.


	2. Akira

It wasn’t the same.

The gas station was still there, still manned by a single overworked attendant with dead fish eyes and a tired smile frozen on their lips. The school was still there, still tiny and still filled with gossip over every little insignificant thing that happened around town. The cats on the floodplain were still there, the large Department Store was still there, the historical Amagi Inn was still there.

Nothing changed about Inaba. It was still the sleepy old town Akira remembered it to be. His house was still crammed in the residential district. The old couple who lived across from him gave him clipped greetings. Rumours of his arrest, his second arrest as a rebellious thief had spread just as fast as he expected it to. His parents weren’t home.

Nothing changed about Akira’s hometown during his year in Tokyo.

But it didn’t feel the same.

Not anymore.

He shut the front door of his parents’ home with a sigh and stalked over to the living room couch where he collapsed on the cushion with a soft thud. Morgana wiggled his way out of Akira’s bag and onto the couch. “This is your home?” Akira turned face-up so he could watch Morgana’s whiskers twitch and his tail swish around as he peered curiously at Akira’s family home. At the white countertops, at the boring beige sofa, at the obsessively clean space. “It’s quite different from the chief’s attic.”

Akira laughed at that. Though it was a much quieter sound, now. Anything too loud in this too quiet house sounded deafening. “Aren’t you glad not to live in an attic, Morgana?” Akira scratched Morgana behind the ears. Morgana’s tail curled up in delight and his eyes shut with a soft purr. “It’s a lot better than Sakura’s attic, isn’t it?”

Morgana’s eyes opened. For some reason, Akira didn’t like the look his cat gave him. “Do you really think that?”

Of course, Akira wanted to say. Here he was, back home, his actual home. Back in his hometown where whispers about his criminal past would always trail after him like a cape, where his parent’s house was devoid of any character and life, where Akira would have to come back to a quiet building because his mother worked the night shift as the receptionist in the hospital and his father didn’t bother doing anything but drink beer from the fridge when he came home most nights.

He had his old room back. A spartan square room with only a bed and a dresser. Without the potted plant he’d come to love, without the decorations and gifts his friends had given him, without the work desk where he spent hours meticulously crafting tiny knicknacks together. It was a fairly large house that had everything he could possibly need; a nice bathroom with a large tub, a fancy new tv unlike the tiny box he had in Sakura’s attic, a lot of space where he would spend the rest of his life alone.

Without his friends.

Without freshly made curry given to him with a smile.

Without someone to say “welcome back” as soon as he opens the door.

“Joker?” Morgana shimmied away from Akira’s hand, walking on his chest to look at him properly. He nudged Akira’s cheek with a paw. “Hey. Joker. Akira. Are you okay?”

Thankfully, Morgana didn’t mention the fact that Akira’s face was wet with tears. “Why wouldn’t I be?” Akira croaked. He wrapped Morgana in a half-assed hug. Morgana’s tail traced patterns on his forearms. “I’m back home. I’ll be going back to school where you can’t come with me because you can’t fit in the space underneath the desks here. All of my friends are still in Tokyo and I have to live the rest of my life here listening to everyone else mumbling shit about me when they think I can’t hear!” A sigh. Akira’s hands running through Morgana’s fur, trembling. “I’m fucking fine.”

It felt like yesterday when Akira stumbled into Shibuya, wide-eyed and confused, lost. Staring at the cars zooming by and the bright lights and the allure and danger of a strange city. It felt like it was only yesterday when he and Ryuji stumbled upon a lavish castle, when Ann cried and broke down in front of him at some random diner because of Kamoshida’s persistence, when Morgana first came into his life and taught him how to be a phantom thief.

It felt like he had met Makoto only a day ago, when she trailed him all over Shibuya with a flimsy magazine like that would stop her from getting noticed, when she vowed to stop Kaneshiro with them all. It felt like Haru came to him to ask for help with differentiating coffee beans only a few hours ago, when they planted flowers together on Shujin’s rooftop, when she annulled her engagement with Sugimura and gave Akira the biggest smile he had ever seen. It felt like it was only a few minutes ago when he met Sakura, Chihaya, Yoshida, Shinya, Iwai, Mishima, and all the other people who had made his life worth living.

It felt like he had met Yusuke for the first time only a few seconds ago. When Yusuke dragged Akira all over Tokyo in pursuit of true beauty. When Yusuke proudly gave him ‘Desire and Hope’ with their fingers brushing against each other. When Yusuke softly requested for Akira to keep smiling until he was able to capture it on canvas. When Yusuke gave him a tearful smile at the train station as Akira was bound to leave.

A year was not enough.

A year would never be enough.

It’s not enough.

The box of things Akira had from Tokyo sat near the door. He couldn’t bring everything. His room was nowhere big enough to display all that his friends had given him and his parents would never allow such “unsightly” decoration around the house. At least they agreed to let Akira hang the painting from “a famous artist” by the living room. Something to give the white nothingness of the house a little bit of colour.

Morgana stayed quiet as Akira wiped his tears away. “At least I have you Morgana. You’ll stay with me, right?”

A purr, Morgana doing his damnedest to snuggle into Akira’s neck. “Hmph. You couldn’t get rid of me even if you tried.”

“I would never! Unless you try to steal my food. Then you’re gonna be living in the streets.” Morgana giggled. Having fur around his neck was ticklish.

The house was too quiet. There was no smell of coffee in the air, or the white noise of a television. He should unpack his things. He’d finish his last year of highschool at Yasogami and he’d have to enroll himself. Again. Not like anyone was going to come with him. Too busy. Not enough time. You’re already a problem child so don’t you dare think of being a burden on us even more. It was deadly quiet, at least, until his parents would come home.

At least he still had the headphones Futaba gave him. When his parents begin yelling at each other, he can block them out.

Pretend that his parents gave a shit about him.

Pretend that he was back in Tokyo.

Pretend that he wasn’t going to spend this year alone.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to know what I'm writing next click over [HERE](https://crownonymous.tumblr.com/sched)  
If you want to stay updated on the progress I've made on my fics click [HERE](https://crownonymous.tumblr.com/tagged/crownonynews)  
And if you want to come say hi or just get bombarded with random posts, you can find me over [HERE](https://landofsaltandshade.tumblr.com/)


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